I’m halfway to the dock when that warmth crowds my back again.
Jack.
He reaches my side and physically turns me to face him, thrusting my phone at me. “Dav keeps calling.”
My dad.
I know he keeps calling. Along with death and taxes, and the splintered feeling inside me, my father is a constant I can’tescape. It’s why, once I spied Oscar on the horizon, I left my phone on a table inside, hoping someone would steal it.
Crush it. Drown it.
I shove the thing in my pocket.
Jack frowns. “What if it’s important?”
“It isn’t. I talked to Lisa this morning.”
My mum. Salt of the earth, but such a fool for my dad there’ll always be a part of me that doesn’t want to talk to her either.
Jack’s hand slips from my shoulder. I ache from the loss of it. Steel myself for Jack to go back inside when he looks so much better beneath the crisp blue skies the storm has left behind.
But he doesn’t move. If anything, he seems to shift closer and it’s instinct to meet him in the middle. To bring us chest to chest as if I’m his lover, not the platonic soulmate he needs.
He’s bigger than me. Wider. If he wanted, he could swallow me whole, a turn of phrase that has my heart cannibalising itself all over again.
“You shouldn’t leave your phone lying around,” he rumbles. “Someone might need you.”
“I’m right here.”
“I don’t meanme, Sol. I always need you.”
“Yeah?”
Jack nods and plucks the tea-towel from his back pocket to rub at a damp spot on my shirt. “That dream last night…I don’t remember it, but I hope it was about you. Everything’s better when you’re there.”
He’s killing me.
Such a beautiful death.
And the worst thing about it, as how close we are seems to dawn on him in slow waves, is he has no damn idea.
Jack stops scrubbing spilled beer from my clothes and steps back as if burned by whatever thoughts crowd his brain, wipinghis palms on his faded jeans. Setting space between us like a brick wall I know will crumble before I take my next breath.
He turns to go.
Changes his mind and comes back, grabbing my hands again. “Don’t go out on the boat without saying goodbye.”
“You know I won’t.”
Never have. I’m a fourth generation fisherman; I know better than to sail away without acknowledging the love we leave behind. And Jack knowsmebetter than that. Which means he’s fretting about something else and he’s not going to tell me what anytime soon, if ever.
He drops my hands and goes back inside with Fiadh at his heels.
TheSironadocks.
Oscar leaps from the deck, landing on the small jetty with more grace than his Viking-sized frame deserves.
He gives me a look.